I've always had a soft spot in my heart for students. Maybe my former (programming) students would vehemently disagree with that. But I've always wanted to teach the things I've learned and applied in my craft to students. After all, I've also been a student (and I still am, a student of my profession!). There are many things I wish I knew when I was still in college. That's why I taught part-time when I was still reviewing for my engineering board exams; that's why I came back to teach at my alma mater after working for a leading Internet Service Provider (ISP) for one and a half years. Somehow I want students to know what's going on in the real world and be able to relate it with the theories that they're learning, so they can appreciate it better.

When I was in college I probably didn't understand a thing about computer networking. I only really appreciated it when I saw those theories come to life in the ISP I was working for. And when I came back to the academe I had a great time teaching stuff like IP, subnetting, routing and application-layer protocols to my students. Had I not seen those stuff at work in the real world, I doubt I would be able to teach them effectively, if at all!

So what's my point in this rant? I want to challenge, maybe inspire, the professionals in this group -- in the local industry, even -- to share what you are learning "in the real world" to students. When I asked the audience in yesterday's MSDN talk if they've heard of test-driven development, none of them raised their hand. And only a few have gone out of their way to explore stuff like object-oriented programming and .NET. I wasn't really surprised but at the back of my mind I was hoping that the state of computer education today had improved upon the state of computer education during my days. Guess what, it really hasn't.

I commend Microsoft Philippines for taking time (and resources) to regularly put up events like MSDN Student Developers' Night. Hopefully we can see greater cooperation from the professional sector in helping uplift the state of IT education in this country.